Encyclopedia of

Gabriel GarcÍa MÁrquez Biography

Gabriel García Márquez is a Colombian novelist, short-story
writer, and journalist whose works have earned him the reputation of being
one of the greatest living writers in Spain and Latin America.

Education and newspaper jobs

Born in Aracataca, Colombia, on March 6, 1928, Gabriel García
Márquez was the oldest of Gabriel Eligio García and Luisa
Santiaga Márquez Iguarán's twelve children. His father
was a telegraph operator. The family was poor, and García
Márquez spent the first eight years of his life with his maternal
grandparents. They were the most important and influential people in his
life, and he loved listening to them tell stories about
Colombia's old days.

García Márquez received his early education from the Liceo
Nacional of Zipaquirá, Colombia, from which he graduated in 1946.
He then entered the University of Bogotá to study law. (He studied
for several years but did not enjoy it and never finished.) He wrote his
first story in 1947, and it was published in the newspaper
El Espectador.
Over the next few years he had several more stories published in
newspapers. In 1948 civil war broke out in the country and García
Márquez moved to Cartagena, Colombia, where he worked as a
journalist for the newspaper
El Universal.
In 1950 he moved to Barranquilla, Colombia, where he wrote for
El Heraldo.
In 1954 he returned to Bogotá and worked at
El Espectador
while writing short stories on the side.

Early works

Between 1955 and 1960 several published works had begun to establish
García Márquez's fame in the Spanish-speaking world.
La hojarasca
(1955), a short novel, is set in the made-up town of Macondo in the
swampy coastal area of northeastern Colombia known as the Ciénaga.
The story reflects the changes the twentieth century brought to the life
of this sleepy country town. Much of García Márquez's
work centers around funerals. In
La hojarasca
mourners who knew the dead man in life think about the past, each from
his own point of view. Three different people—an old colonel, his
daughter, and her son—tell their story. The dead man, a doctor
and former friend of the colonel, had committed suicide. The narrators
do not entirely explain what happened, but in the course of each story
much of the past history of the village of Macondo is revealed. A strong
feeling of doom fills the novel.

Macondo and the Buendía family were further developed in
El coronel no tiene quien le escriba
(1961;
Nobody Writes to the Colonel and Other Stories
). The next collection of short stories,
Los funerales de la Mama Grande
(1962), strengthened García Márquez's growing
reputation. The publication of
Cien años de soledad
(1967;
One Hundred Years of Solitude
) created a stir when it sold over one hundred thousand copies in
fifteen editions in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1969.

The story of
Cien años de soledad
describes the rise and fall of a village as seen in
the lives of five generations of one family. It ends with flood and
drought, which comes as the last living Buendía figures out the
ancient predictions of doom and learns that "races condemned to
100 years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on
earth." The family is meant to represent Colombia, and through
extension, both South America and the rest of the world. Pablo Neruda
(1904–1973), the famous Chilean poet, praised
Cien años de soledad,
and it is generally considered García Márquez's
masterpiece.

Other works

García Márquez considered his next novel,
El otono del patriarca
(1975;
The Autumn of the Patriarch
), "a perfect integration (combination) of journalism and
literature." García Márquez continued to write novels,
short stories, essays, and film scripts. In 1982 he was awarded the
Nobel Prize in Literature. In 1983 he wrote the film script
Erendira,
adapted from his 1972 novella (short novel)
La increible y triste historia de la candida Erendira y su abuela
desalmada
(
Innocent Erendira and Her Heartless Grandmother
).

García Márquez's other famous novel,
El amor en los tiempos del colera
(
Love in the Time of Cholera
) was written in 1985 (with an English translation published in 1988).
This novel is an exploration of love and the relationship between aging,
death, and decay. After
Cholera
he published the novels
El general en su laber-into
(1989;
The General in His Labyrinth,
1990),
Doce cuentos peregrinos
(1992;
Strange Pilgrims,
1993), and
Of Love and Other Demons
(1994).

García Márquez's fictional blend of history, politics,
real social situations, and fantasy (something made up) has given rise
to the term "magical realism." The use of magical

Gabriel García Márquez.
Reproduced by permission of

AP/Wide World Photos

.

realism was often imitated by other Latin American authors, especially
Isabel Allende (1942–). García Márquez's need to
tell a story drives his writing. In the July 1997 issue of
Harper's,
García Márquez writes, "The best story is not always
the first one but rather the one that is told better."

Later years

In 1999 García Márquez returned to journalism with the
purchase of
Cambio,
a weekly newspaper in Colombia. He rolled up his sleeves and went to
work trying to improve both the paper's content and its sales.
His duties ranged from interviewing
heads of state and business leaders to editing copy and photographs.
García Márquez told the
New York Times
that he wanted his paper's young reporters "to tell a
story, to go back to the time when a reader could know what happened as
if he were there himself."

Later that year García Márquez was diagnosed with cancer and
disappeared from public life. Rumors began to circulate that he was
dying, aided by a poem appearing on the Internet supposedly written by
him as a sort of farewell. In December 2000 García Márquez
gave an interview in which he denied writing the poem and said that he
had been keeping a low profile because he was busy writing his
autobiography (the story of one's own life), which he decided to
do after learning that he had cancer. In March 2001 García
Márquez announced that he would never set foot in Spain again
unless a new European Union rule requiring Colombian citizens to obtain
visas (identification documents permitting travel into foreign
countries) before entering Spain was withdrawn.

For More Information

Bell-Villada, Gene H.
García Márquez: The Man and His Work.
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990.

User Contributions:

i'm not going tell you that you got some wrong information about "Gabo". but in a very well known web-based encyclopedia gave Gabo's birth year was in 1927.
but here in your page, given 1928 the year of Gabo's birth.

so that i'm puzzled. actually which is the correct.it may give me a real help.
i'm looking for your feedback here.

Regards.

Comment about this article, ask questions, or add new information about this topic: